One Of Those Days
by Pumpkin Hatching
Summary: Harry broods. Perhaps he's not all good and innocent as everyone seems to think. Harry's POV. Post GoF. PG for slight language.


  
Disclaimer: Anything, anywhere, and anybody you recognize from the HP books belong to JK Rowling. Whatever else should be the result of too many roller coaster rides I rode at the theme park yesterday. ^_^;;;   
  
Summary: Harry broods. Perhaps he's not all good and innocent as everyone seems to think. Harry's POV. Post GoF.  
  
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One Of Those Days  
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I'm having one of those days.  
  
You know, those days when it's raining outside and all you feel like doing is to sit on an armchair in the common room, stare outside the window and at the rain-soaked tree-tops of the Forbidden Forest, swaying to stormy winds. And brood. And wonder.  
  
And do I ever wonder.  
  
I wonder if it's not really my fault that Cedric died. The logical part of my mind supplies that I can't have known what was coming, despite the aches in my scar or those disturbing dreams I had during the course of my fourth year. I couldn't have known that the Cup was a portkey.   
  
But Voldemort ordered Wormtail to "kill the spare". Wormtail, whom I let live on the end of my third year. The person who put Voldemort back in his body. The bastard who killed Cedric.   
  
I. Let. Him. Live. He's in my debt, says Professor Dumbledore. What's a bloody debt useful for when I witness the ingrate kill my schoolmate?   
  
I know I would have never let Sirius or Lupin become murderers just to avenge my father's death. But I wonder if I shouldn't have killed the rat myself.   
  
Such dark thoughts shouldn't belong to The Harry Potter, the hero, I know. Ron and Hermione would probably keel over in shock at all the murderous ways I've dreamed of taking all my frustrations on Wormtail, if he were only within my reach. Horrible, horrible tortures in mind for the coward who betrayed his best friends and my family. After all he has done, all the lives he's ruined, he doesn't deserve my mercy.  
  
Bloody idiot, I am. Even though I wanted to spare Padfoot and Moony from the killing, I should have at least done something. Maybe castrated the bastard. Before I realized that Sirius was innocent, I was overcome with rage and ready to kill him. I should have directed the same amount of rage, or maybe even more, to kill Wormtail.  
  
I should have, but I didn't. No point in thinking of it now, but I still do.  
  
Maybe I should start scheming.   
  
After all, even a "goody-goody Gryffindor" like myself could have a dark side. And up yours, Malfoy, Voldemort, maybe you don't realize just how dark my dark side could be. The more to surprise you for underestimating me, when it comes down to it.  
  
Perhaps the Sorting Hat was right, after all. Maybe I really could have been a great Slytherin. Not that I would trade Gryffindor for another house, mind.  
  
Well, I would never want to be in the same house Voldemort was in, anyway. Despite all Tom Marvolo Riddle told me about our similarities, aside from being Parselmouths and having dark hair and crappy childhoods, we are alike in not a single thing.  
  
Furthermore, as much as I'd dreamed of having my revenge, I would never want to get it at the cost of innocent lives. I have my own code of honor, thank you very much, and I'd like to uphold it no matter what happens.  
  
Besides, I'm not a hypocrite.  
  
By Merlin's name, he *does* realize that he's insulting himself, everytime he calls someone a mudblood, doesn't he? Or maybe not. After all, you can never tell with a stupid idiot like him.  
  
I don't think anyone has ever had the nerve to call him an idiot. However, it's my firm belief that despite his cruelty and cunning, and his academic brilliance when he was attending Hogwats, that's all he is. A blind idiot of the highest degree. Despite all the transformations he's gone through in his quest to master the Dark Arts, and despite his Slytherin ancestry, he'll always be his father's son. He who was so deep in hate and denial, he invented the word "Mudblood" to describe people so very much like himself--people born or partly born of muggle blood.   
  
I wonder how his pride must be suffering at the fact that I, Harry James Potter, am less than a "Mudblood" than he is, by public belief that my mother was a muggle-born witch. Imagine the further embarrassment he'll suffer in front of his beloved pureblood Death Eaters when the truth comes out that I am a pureblooded wizard; that Mum was merely a gifted witch from three generations of Squibs (or so Sirius and Dumbledore told me at the start of the school year), Squibs who came from a long line of powerful witches and wizards, themselves. It made me stop wondering about the fact that Voldemort didn't want to kill Mum, when everyone knew that he'd kill a muggle-born witch without hesitation. The answer to why he wanted Mum to merely stand aside while he kills me is so obvious now.  
  
Poor Aunt Petunia, no wonder she hated my mother's memory. And poor Voldemort, he knows I'm a pureblood, that's another thing to add to his list of reasons to hate me. Not that I really pity him. After all, it's me who has the scar hurting whenever he thinks of me.  
  
In Voldemort and the Death Eaters' convulted standards, the purer your blood, the better you are than your muggle-born counterparts. In their standards, my pedigree is better than Voldemort's. I'd love to see the look on Malfoy's face when he realizes that. I doubt he'd be too pleased that he has one less thing to gloat about. In his standards, my blood is as pure as his is, and therefore we are equals, or maybe I'm better than him since I can outdo him in almost everything.   
  
They're stupid standards anyway, invented by a stupid hypocrite. I will always believe what Hagrid (or was it Dumbledore) told me, that it matters not what your lineage is, when what counts is the person you grow up to be. And look at Hermione. I'd say she's better than Malfoy or I anyday.  
  
Anyway, maybe Dumbledore would agree about Voldemort's idiocy. After all, the Headmaster's the one who's been giving me all these hints and pieces to the puzzle of my past and Voldemort's past ever since my first year. I was too miserable and curious back then that I didn't put together what was staring me in the face. But I know, now.  
  
You can say that enlightenment came when I was weeding the Dursleys' garden the summer after the third task, when I was too angry at myself and at Voldemort to realize that I was pulling on Aunt Petunia's prized ferns by mistake.  
  
Oh well. Uncle Vernon's punishment (a whole evening of repainting the garage and redecorating the guest room) was bearable when the only thing whirling in my mind was Professor Dumbledore's voice, telling me something at the end of my first year.  
  
What was that he said? Oh, yes, "If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realise that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark...It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."  
  
And thank you, Mum, from the bottom of my heart. No wonder Dumbledore looked so triumphant when I told him that Voldemort used my blood to revive him.   
  
My blood is running in his veins, true. Voldemort can touch me now, yes.   
  
But my Mum's love will be like poison in his blood.  
  
Perhaps it's going to eat at him, from the inside out. As much as it appalls me to think with such malice and hatred towards another, given that the receipient of said malice is Lord Voldemort himself, I don't feel too sorry about it.   
  
And now that I've got myself thinking about Mum's love for me, I don't think she and Dad are going to be too happy if they find out about exactly what I plan to do with Wormtail when I get my hands on him. I reckon Dad wouldn't have wanted his son to murder anyone for him and Mum, either, the way he wouldn't want Moony and Sirius to become murderers.   
  
But with Wormtail, death would be the sweetest of mercies. Something he doesn't deserve, and something I don't intend to give him until I'm done with him. He deserves agony worse than the Cruciatus curse, for all the cowardly things he's done, at the expense of all those innocent victims.   
  
I want him to suffer the way everyone's suffered because of him. I want him to bleed, to scream with pain, to beg and cry for mercy. I want to gloat over his sickening form as he writhes in white-hot agony.   
  
Everyone thinks that my most hated enemy is Voldemort himself. But he isn't. I can't hate anyone more than I hate Peter Pettigrew. Voldemort may have been the one to kill my parents, but Pettigrew's betrayal runs too deep.   
  
Perhaps I hate him enough to bear my father's disappointment in me, if I do end up murdering the son-of-a-bitch to avenge him.   
  
But I wonder, if it were my Mum and I who died while Dad lived, won't he have thought the same things I'm thinking now? Perhaps he'll understand.   
Perhaps he'll want the same revenge.  
  
I just wonder.   
  
Oh well. I haven't tortured or killed Wormtail yet. No sense to keep thinking of what my dad would or would not think over something that hasn't happened yet.  
  
I'll blow the bridge up when I get there.  
  
For now, I'll just sit here and brood on other things.  
  
After all, it's one of those days.  
  
  
  
--end--  
  
A/N: *giggle* And the total number of non-slashy HP fics I've written now amount to a staggering THREE (not counting that horrible Sirius POV poem). *gasps in shock* Hey, in all my fic-writing years, that's a *lot* of non-slash ficcies. ^_____^ *feels inordinately proud of herself*  
  
Now, if only people would review to tell me what they thought of it... *ahemcoughHINTcoughcough* *giggles and winks* But seriously, comments and criticisms would be most appreciated.  
  
Have a nice day! 


End file.
